LAS VEGAS — It’s based on a 12,000-line poem thought to be more than 2,700 years old, and it will be, quite literally, the biggest movie of the summer.

Christopher Nolan filmed “The Odyssey,” opening Friday, using technology that didn’t exist until he pressed for its invention.

It’s the first feature-length movie ever shot entirely with IMAX film cameras. The resulting 70 mm IMAX version is a massive reel of film, boasting frames about three times larger than regular 70mm film and around nine times larger than traditional 35mm film.

There are 25 theaters in America where you can see this version of “The Odyssey,” with none of the incredibly vivid images cropped out, exactly the way Nolan intended.

The only one in Nevada is Brenden Theatres at the Palms.

$32,000 worth of humidifiers

Brenden executives learned in February that their Las Vegas location would be getting “The Odyssey” in the coveted format. But first, IMAX technicians had to certify the projection booth, which hadn’t used its massive film projector since Nolan’s “Interstellar” was released in 2014.

“They were good about it,” Walter Eichinger, Brenden’s vice president of operations, says during a tour of the booth. “They sent people to help us get prepared. So it wasn’t, ‘We’re coming tomorrow. You guys better be ready.’ They sent technicians, and they just brought us up to speed and got our film projector out of mothballs. They upgraded the sound. They upgraded the software.”

Among the improvements: Brenden shelled out for two $16,000 humidifiers to keep the physical film loose and pliable. That sounds like an enormous amount of money until you consider that each 70 mm IMAX print of “The Odyssey” reportedly cost $80,000 to produce.

“We were all-in. We said, ‘If we’re going to do it, we’re gonna do it the right way,’ ” Eichinger recalls. “We didn’t cut any corners. We got exactly what they recommended.”

Projectionists flown in

Obtaining the print and getting the equipment up and running was just the beginning.

Somebody has to actually operate the projector.

“We have a group chat that’s got, right now, 90 guys maybe, and some of those are administrators and non-booth personnel,” projectionist Ted Cotton says.

That’s approximately 90 people, worldwide, who know how to run a 70 mm IMAX film projector.

Cotton came from Phoenix, as did Joshua Shroyer. Peter Dimopoulos traveled from Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. The three projectionists are contracted with IMAX for the four weeks of showtimes currently on sale. They’ll share time in the booth with Shane Kaiser, a regional technician with Brenden. With up to five screenings a day of a roughly three-hour movie, they’ll make sure someone oversees the film reel each day from 6 a.m. to 2 a.m.

“You can’t leave the booth. … This is heavy-duty stuff. It’s heavy machinery,” Cotton explains. “So one of us is always here. We’re monitoring, listening, watching the show quality and making sure every show runs up to the specific IMAX standards.”

As Dimopoulos notes, “It’s not so much running it. It’s about (being there) when things go wrong.”

A technological first

So why all the fuss?

“The Odyssey” is the first movie shot entirely with IMAX film cameras, because of the distracting amount of noise they make. Matt Damon, who stars as the king of Ithaca who sets out on an epic quest to return home following the Trojan War, has described the experience as like having someone running a blender in your face. (“The Odyssey” rounded out its cast with the likes of Tom Holland, Zendaya, Anne Hathaway, Robert Pattinson, Lupita Nyong’o and Charlize Theron.)

With 2008’s “The Dark Knight,” writer-director Nolan used roughly 28 minutes of IMAX film footage, primarily for action sequences and establishing shots. He’s been pushing the boundaries of what those cameras can handle ever since.

Before filming “The Odyssey,” Nolan went to IMAX executives to see if they could perfect the muffled camera casing known as “the blimp” they nearly completed for 2020’s “Tenet.”

This time, it was a success. And, with the advancements IMAX had made with its cameras, the technology was finally quiet enough to record dialogue.

In Nolan’s previous uses of IMAX footage, the movie’s image would expand to fill the top and bottom of the screen, then revert to its original aspect ratio. By filming all of “The Odyssey” that way, the entirety of the movie will fill every inch of Brenden’s mammoth screen.

‘You can’t get that picture with digital’

While the size definitely matters, what really sets 70 mm IMAX apart is the clarity. Most movie theaters can muster 2K or 4K resolution. IMAX film delivers images somewhere in the neighborhood of 16K to 18K.

“You can’t get that picture with digital,” Brenden’s Kaiser says. “It’s unreal how awesome that picture quality is.”

“You can’t beat the floor-to-ceiling picture,” Brenden general manager Taylor Mirasol notes. “It’s completely immersive.”

Cinephiles certainly have noticed. Tickets for some of the world’s first 70 mm IMAX screenings sold out almost immediately when they went on sale last July. Fans caused Fandango and other ticketing apps to crash June 4 when tickets for the rest of the screenings, including those at Brenden, became available.

There’s also the issue of scarcity. Brenden’s IMAX theater was built with 120 seats but, after upgrading those chairs to recliners, the capacity shrank to 61. And it isn’t just Las Vegans seeking out those tickets. Mirasol says she’s had calls from as far away as Colorado and Mexico.

A 5-month effort

“I think it’s really just exciting for us to be put back on the map,” Mirasol says.

That excitement is contagious.

“It’s such a nostalgic feeling,” says Kaiser, who hadn’t gotten to thread film into a projector in the dozen years between “Interstellar” and the arrival of “The Odyssey” print. “It’s almost like vinyl. It’s coming back. It’s crazy to see.”

When it comes to working with 70 mm IMAX again, Cotton, the projectionist, is more succinct: “It’s heaven.”

Johnny Brenden, the theater chain’s owner and namesake, has always been a fan of IMAX, VP of operations Eichinger says. Ted Mann, Brenden’s grandfather who built the 450-theater circuit Mann Theatre Corp. that included Mann’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, owned IMAX for a time, he notes.

With the recent upgrades, Brenden Theatres is back in the rotation for future 70 mm IMAX releases, starting with “Dune: Part Three” on Dec. 18.

“It’s been a five-month effort,” Eichinger says, “but it’s been out of excitement and appreciation to have this back again.”

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